Prolog More
financial institutions, professionals, educators, entertainers and
politicians were on this one mile of street than any other African
American street in the South. The street
was "paved in gold" observed John Wesley Dobbs. Today
the buildings on Auburn Avenue honor the determination and tenacity
of Black Americans operating within the confines of extreme social
and economic segregation between 1880 and 1965 to create a thriving
community and six centers of higher education adjacent to this street.

The
fully institutionalized
racial intolerance represented by the inner ring around all these
pages (if you don't see this you need (1) Flash
6.0 and (2) Shockwave
8.5 plug-ins) is a poignant reminder that racial discrimination
has happened before in human history, most recently African Americans,
people of the Jewish faith, and American Indians, and will happen
again unless we as civilized beings are ever watchful for where
the feelings of a few shape an entire cultural outlook to the detriment
of a minority group. The outer 'sky' ring represents constructive
life forces in the form of events, organizations and people that
arose consistently and patiently to overcome and finally overpower
the cultural oppression of the inner ring.

Although
economically governed by the restrictive Jim Crow Laws, from the
1920's through the 1940's Sweet Auburn Avenue was at the height
of its social vigor and the present day buildings reflect this energy.
After this golden era, the west side of Atlanta around the Atlanta
University Center became a more fashionable area to locate an
African American business or residence. Desegregration in the 1960's
furthered an exodus of people and energy from the area, leaving
the street somewhat depopulated as it is today.

A passage from Where
Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn by Gary Pomerantz pages 123-124,
describes Auburn Avenue between 1924 and 1938, through the viewpoint
of "Mayor" John Wesley Dobbs
(also called "The Grand"):Dobbs
believed there was magic in Auburn Avenue, especially in that two-block
stretch between Piedmont Avenue and Butler Street (now Jesse
Hill Street). When Blacks spoke of Auburn, that's what they
meant: the churches, clubs, barbershops, shoeshines, small businesses,
restaurants and banks between the Rucker Building
and the Yates and Milton Drugstore. Once it had been called Wheat
Street, but in 1893 white residents successfully petitioned the
city council to change it to Auburn Avenue, convinced it had a more
stylish sound. By the 1930s some called Auburn the "Black Peachtree,"
though, physically, that was a bit of a stretch since Peachtree
wound north of the city and continued for many miles. In its entirety,
Auburn Avenue ran little more than a mile and a half. Yet even as
developer Hermon Perry triggered a housing boom for blacks on the
west side, Auburn remained the spiritual center of black Atlanta.
The three legged stool of black finance the Citizens Trust Bank
(of which Dobbs was among the original
directors), Mutual Federal Savings & Loan and Alonzo
Herndon's Atlanta Life Insurance Company was located on Auburn.
To walk the Avenue on any summer evening was to experience the vitality
of black life in the city: the sounds of ragtime from the Top
Hat, the smell of fried chicken from Ma Suttons and the constant
hum of animated street chatter. It became the place for black dreamers.
You knew you had arrived on the Avenue once you had your own pulpit
or your own cornerstone. Henry Rucker,
Alonzo Herndon and Benjamin
J. Davis already had erected buildings on Auburn and soon
Dobbs would have his.

"Sweet Auburn Avenue" is what
the Grand began to call it, in honor of the timeless Oliver Goldsmith
poem from 1770, "The Deserted Village.

Sweet Auburn! loveliest
village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheer'd the laboring
swain

Money
made the Avenue sweet, Dobbs said, and through voter registration
he would make it even sweeter.

The Following is text from
the audio narrationWill
The Circle Be Unbroken?NARRATOR: Segregated by
Jim Crow laws, Atlanta's black population developed a network of
independent businesses, churches, and community institutions, including
a remarkable cluster of five black colleges
around Atlanta University. Former Atlanta mayor, Maynard
Jackson...MAYNARD JACKSON:Where
else have you had since 1865 a pouring into a city of trained black
humanity, influenced by positive principles and values, like you've
had here in Atlanta? They come from all over the world, all over
the USA, and all over the world.
Literally. It's almost like you can see a great hand reaching down
and lifting Atlanta up, because of these colleges.
That made life a lot more bearable. It literally was a wheel within
a wheel, a world within a world. Blacks could not go out to many
white things, but whites came onto these campuses.NARRATOR:While the
colleges gave black Atlanta intellectual freedom, Auburn Avenue,
the community's commercial hub, provided jobs dependent on black
consumers, not white bosses. Together, commerce, schools, and churches
forged a strong middle class in the black community. Bill Calloway--a
pioneer in the insurance industry...W. L. CALLOWAY: Auburn
Avenue was considered the almost nucleus so far as black businesses
throughout America was concerned. It had more financial institutions
than any other city.NARRATOR: NAACP leader, Jondelle Johnson...JONDELLE JOHNSON: Atlanta
was a business Mecca. We had everything here that anybody just about
had white. We had every kind of business, every kind of store, I'm
talking about first class. W. L. CALLOWAY: And
that's why John Wesley Dobbs, coined the
phrase "Sweet Auburn" Avenue because it said it was more
sugar in that one block than in anywhere else in America. More concentration
of financing.